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Tip of the Week: Make an iPhone “Live” Picture into a Boomerang

Hi everyone! I’m Lily from Hungerlust Travel, and my tip of the week is how to make a Boomerang from a photo for iPhone users. Boomerangs used to drive me crazy – how you only had one shot to capture something, and that you end up repeating it multiple times to get a good shot! This tip makes the Boomerang process much simpler.

If you have an iPhone 6S or newer (6S Plus, 6 SE, or all 7 models) you have a feature on your phone camera called “LIVE Mode.” LIVE mode turns every photo you take into a mini 3 second video (it records 1.5 second before the still capture, and 1.5 seconds after.)

Making a Boomerang from an iPhone LIVE Picture

1) If you have the LIVE feature on your phone, you are able to turn it on and off from the camera screen. Open up your camera app, and look at the top of the screen. There should be a small circular bullseye button in the middle of the bar. If this circle is yellow, live mode is on. (If it’s white, just click it once to turn on.)

2) Then, take a photo of a moving object. Hold your phone very still! You will see a small yellow rectangle with the word LIVE appear at the top of your screen for 3 seconds while it records. Editor’s note: it looks very much like taking a regular picture, and you may not even notice you have LIVE mode on, especially if you’re taking pictures of people, until you’re scrolling through your pics and can’t figure out why they’re moving 🙂

3) Head to Instagram. If you don’t know how to upload an already-taken photo to your story, this is a tip-within-a-tip! From your Instagram homepage, swipe left to add a story. Your camera should appear. Instead of pressing the white circle to take a new photo, swipe up. Every photo that you’ve taken in the past 24 hours will appear at the bottom of your screen. Select a photo, and you can edit with text and emoji, and add to your stories. Back to the Boomerang tip!

4) When you swipe up from the camera, select the photo you took with LIVE mode, and it will populate into your screen. It will populate as a still photo. Press down on the photo. You should see a small “loading circle” appear, then the word BOOMERANG, and the image should animate on your screen. It then acts as any normal video on your Instagram story, where you can add a filter, pin text, or decorate with emojis.

You can also just use the “save” button at the bottom of your screen if you want to save the boomerang for later, or upload it as a post on Instagram instead of just a story.

This tip has saved me tons of time, and allowed me to retroactively make a boomerang where I originally did not plan to!

Editor’s note: Look at this SWEET Boom I made using Lily’s tip!! It’s so meta!

Remember that this feature is only available within 24 hours of taking the original snap on live mode. (Some more tech savvy ‘grammer may know how to change the embedded time-stamp on a previously taken photo, so you can still use this trick, but I am not the right person to explain that one!)

If you enjoyed this tip, check out my Instagram at @hungerlusttravel, or my brand new blog at www.hungerlusttravel.com. I am a food and travel blogger based in the West Loop of Chicago. My upcoming trips that I will be sharing include Richmond Virginia, Boston, and Vietnam!